UNIVERSITY OF UTAH MEDIA RELEASE
Contacts:-- Peter Martin, director, Utah Traffic Lab - office (801) 581-7144, secretary (801) 581-6878, cell (801) 750-0257, home (801) 733-5251, [email protected]-- Lee Siegel, science news specialist, University of Utah - office (801) 581-8993, cell (801) 244-5399, [email protected]
LAB TO MONITOR TRAFFIC DURING OLYMPICSUniversity of Utah Facility Will Analyze What Goes Right and Wrong
Nov. 15, 2001 - When thousands of people visit the greater Salt Lake City area for the February 2002 Olympic Winter Games, University of Utah researchers will be monitoring traffic jams and other highway problems from the university's Utah Traffic Lab.
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Traffic Operations Center uses 156 video cameras and 144 in-pavement sensors on freeways and major arterials to monitor traffic and attempt to keep it moving smoothly.
The same camera views and data are fed to the Utah Traffic Lab in the basement of the university's Kennecott Building, where faculty and student researchers will collect and later analyze the data. They will not deal with immediate traffic problems, but study what goes right and wrong during the Olympics.
"We are just sitting in the bleachers watching," said Peter Martin, lab director and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "Our focus is national and the future. It's not a question of helping the Olympics run smoothly. We are objective observers of how it [Olympics-related traffic] actually does run. "Other transportation planners and managers will be able to learn from our triumphs and failures, just as we did from Atlanta," site of the 1996 Olympic Summer Games.
Martin said Iteris, an Anaheim, Calif., consulting firm, has a contract with the Federal Highway Administration and UDOT to evaluate UDOT's Advanced Traffic Management System and the agency's plan for handling traffic during the 2002 Winter Games. Under a $30,000 to $40,000 subcontract from Iteris, the Utah Traffic Lab will collect and study Olympics traffic data.
The anticipated increase in traffic during the Olympic Winter Games "is a very unusual opportunity," Martin said. "Experiment is central to the scientific method. But as traffic researchers, we don't have the luxury of experiments. We have to observe real traffic."
The lab will "collect data to monitor the Olympics' impact on the traffic system - and the effectiveness of UDOT's traffic control systems" - including traffic-watching cameras, buried sensors, traffic signals, freeway onramp meters and variable message signs that warn freeway motorists of accidents or congestion, Martin said.
"We are going to be doing some analysis of the data. And we will contribute to a workshop long after the Olympics are gone that says what went well and what didn't."
Martin expects traffic jams because access to Winter Games venues will remain open to private vehicles, "which in my view was short-sighted. It should have been buses only."
Since Sept. 21, UDOT's 156 cameras have provided the Utah Traffic Lab with live video of traffic conditions along the Wasatch Front - the region at the base of the Wasatch Range that includes Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo.
Martin said UDOT collects data from 144 in-pavement sensors located under freeways and major arterials. The sensors record traffic speeds, densities and flows, and send the data to UDOT's Traffic Operations Center. The Utah Traffic Lab soon will get that data from UDOT via six strands of fiber-optic cable, Martin said.
The Utah Traffic Lab, equipped with $500,000 worth of equipment, has a $500,000 annual budget from the U.S. Department of Transportation, UDOT and cities that need traffic consulting work.
The laboratory was established "to further our understanding of traffic problems and how to solve them," Martin said. "What we're doing here is incredibly community-oriented. It is not a bunch of eggheads indulging their intellectual curiosity. It's research applied to real people's problems."
He said the lab also is "cranking out professional transportation specialists" who earn master's degrees or doctorates in civil engineering - expertise Utah once had to import.
Martin said the lab's research is aimed at reducing traffic congestion, improving safety and reducing environmental impacts of traffic.
The lab focuses on Intelligent Transportation Systems, which Martin defines as "smart systems that rely on computers and communication technology to improve the monitoring and management of traffic."
UDOT's Advanced Transportation Management System is such a system, using cameras and sensors that provide data to traffic managers who can control message signs. It also includes thousands of other in-pavement sensors that automatically control traffic signals, and ramp meters on and near freeways and major thoroughfares. Video cameras also provide information to TV stations and police and emergency agencies.
In the future, the UDOT system also will allow traffic managers to control traffic signals remotely, and will automatically change the timing of freeway onramp meters depending on the amount of congestion.
Fiber-optic cables for the system are located under the recently rebuilt Interstate-15 and other area freeways, as well as other major Salt Lake streets such as 400 South, 700 East and Foothill Boulevard.
The Traffic Lab takes real traffic data and uses it to run computer simulations. There is a version of the Salt Lake Valley's freeways and roads inside the lab's computer network. Simulations can be used to test the efficiency of an advanced traffic signal control system software named SCOOT - now used in more than 150 cities worldwide - that collects real traffic flow data and performs thousands of calculations each second to control the timing of traffic signals automatically.
The lab is testing SCOOT for UDOT because "they want to be confident it will work" before using it in Utah.
Research at the lab also includes evaluating freeway high-occupancy vehicle lanes and new equipment, including a camera that watches campus traffic on 100 South from atop the Kennecott Building.
The traffic lab also is conducting a study of UDOT's recently completed $1.59 billion reconstruction of I-15 in the Salt Lake Valley. The project used an innovative "fast-track" method in which the new freeway was built as it was designed, rather than being designed long before construction began. Martin said the study will use computer simulations to compare the financial and social costs of the four-year rebuild with the costs of taking eight to 10 years to rebuild the freeway in the conventional manner.
Other lab projects include studies of various freeway ramp-metering methods, how to collect data from thousands of in-pavement sensors that now only control traffic signals, methods to improve and reduce the cost of bus service for disabled people, and how to improve the efficiency of traffic signal controls in downtown Salt Lake City.
Martin earned bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering at the United Kingdom's University of Wales, then worked for a decade designing traffic signal systems for the British government and consulting firms. He then earned a civil engineering doctorate at the University of Nottingham in 1992 before spending a year as a visiting professor at the California Polytechnic State University's San Luis Obispo campus, where he studied California's notorious traffic.
Martin joined the University of Utah faculty in 1994 because growth in the Salt Lake Valley and its traffic poses "huge challenges" for a transportation researcher.
A copy this news release and a downloadable photo of Peter Martin in the Utah Traffic Lab will be available by 10 a.m. MST Nov. 16 at:http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/01/nov/traffic.html
The Utah Traffic Lab's web site is at:http://www.trafficlab.utah.edu
Utah traffic conditions during the Olympics and other times may be viewed at:http://www.utahcommuterlink.com
University of Utah Public Relations201 S Presidents Circle, Room 308Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9017(801) 581-6773 fax: 585-3350
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